In both the modern office and home environments, it is common to connect a client information handling system (client IHS) to a host or server via a network therebetween. Unfortunately, the network that connects the client IHS to the server may experience occasional service outages that effectively disconnect the client IHS from the network. This of course interrupts any communication that the client IHS may conduct with the server.
Currently, it is typically the user's responsibility to be aware of whether the client IHS has an active network connection or an inactive network connection. In other words, it's up to the user to determine if the network is available to perform a network related task. If the network is not available, then generally the network related task is not performable at that time. Some software applications attempt to address this problem. For example, some client email programs may maintain a local replica of a mail database on the client IHS. When the user composes an email message and selects “send”, the email message remains in a local replica database in the client IHS until a network connection is available. If the client IHS currently has an active network connection, then the client IHS immediately sends the email message over the network to the mail server. However, if the client IHS does not currently have an active network connection, such as during a mail server outage, then the client IHS saves the message in its database and sends the message once the network connection again becomes available. While this approach is helpful, unfortunately it only solves the problem if the particular software application in use includes this feature.
What is needed is a method and apparatus that relieves the user of the burden of determining when a client IHS has a network connection to perform network related tasks.